I am an atheist, have been since – well for as long as I can remember. My family mainly call themselves Catholic though we only went to church for funerals or weddings.

The first memory I have of really discussing religion or god is of a conversation I had with a new friend on a school bus. I was in grade 1 so 6 years old? You know how easily kids make friends – I had just moved to a farm which meant a long bus ride everyday, I was on the bus heading to school and a girl got on and sat near me. She stared at me for a while and finally asked ‘who are you’? I told her my name and asked hers and then asked ‘do you want to be my friend’? She said yes and it was done. From that day on we sat together on the bus and discussed all kind of important things – what kind of sandwich we had in our lunch kits, how many brothers and sisters we had (I was one of 5 and she was one of 11 which fascinated me). One day she talked about something that happened in church. I asked her why she went to church so much and she talked about god and how her mom said she had to go so that god knew she was a good girl. Please remember, we were 6 year old kids and so our conversations were not too deep but I do recall this conversation as I see it as one of those defining moments. Anyway I asked more questions about god and church and she talked about how god created everything, finally I asked – but who made god? She was quiet for a while then she shrugged and said she didn’t know but would ask her mom.

The next day when she got on the bus she was looking at me strangely and blurted out, my mom thinks you are bad. I was crushed, I had never met her mom, what could I have done that was so bad? Nearly in tears I asked her why – why her mom thought I was bad. She said that asking who made god was bad, it meant I didn’t have faith and that was bad. Confused but not wanting to be an even worse person for admitting confusion I told her I didn’t know that rule and to tell her mom I was sorry I asked.

That was the end of our discussions about god – we both avoided talking about it after that.

Of course since then I have had many, many more discussions about religion, and I know now that my friend’s mom just didn’t have an answer and so she reacted harshly. The question, ‘who made your god then’ is one I have asked nearly everyone who has tried to convert me to their beliefs. In the 32 years since I first asked the question, I have yet to hear one good answer. I have gotten various versions of the ‘you’re a bad person for asking oh ye of little faith’ response though.

When I was a teenager I dated a fellow for a couple of years who was very into his faith and went to a Christian post-secondary school where he studied religion. He and I had some excellent conversations about many religions and in helping him study and learning more about religion myself; I became more confident than ever in my atheism.

I don’t hate religious people or religion; what I do hate is what some people do and have done in the name of religion (war, rape, genocide, beatings, torture, etc.) I do think that all the good done in the name of religion is fantastic – and if people need to use religion as a reason for being kind to other humans, for helping out their fellow man then so be it.

It can be done without religion though, maybe, hopefully one day all of humanity will be strong enough to let go of religion and be responsible for their own actions. (Cue John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’…)

I spent half my childhood in Florida, half in Switzerland. I’m Swiss. It might be because western Europe is generally less religious (or at least less militantly religious) as the U.S… but I was never fully convinced about the existence of a god.

My parents never talked about religion, they were never interested in it. Even at six years old I wondered about the problem of evil in this world. How it would not compute if there were a god.

The final nail in the coffin was my father. He is the best, most loving, supportive and caring father anyone could ever hope for, and I love no one more than I love him. When he got a rare, extremely vicious form of cancer when I was 10 years old… It was suddenly clear to me. There is NO GOD. From there, I studied the Bible, some of the Qur’an and started reading and learning about science. And soon, at 12 years old, I was a hardcore atheist.

My father is now 63 years old, and has survived more than 10 years. The only one out of 35 patients with his form of cancer in the last decades still alive, and the only one to have survived more than a handful of years.

No god. Just science, a little bit of luck and my father’s incredible strength and spirit to be happy and humorous even when at his worst health.

This world is amazing, so get rid of your delusions and see it for it’s true beauty.

I’m agnostic… It all simply never made sense to me… BUT… I am not offended at all by statues, religious memorials, manger scenes etc. I pay them their just do and move on. I frankly, LOVE a manger scene during the CHRISTMAS season. Rich in history and tradition they make me feel good… Period. The ones who spend their time on lawsuits fighting these things do offend me, they should consider keeping there feelings to themselves. I see them as most of us do… Troublemakers who are unhappy in life. Therapy will help you tolerate all…

When I was 8 or 9, I got kicked out of Sunday “school” for asking questions. I wasn’t being a smartass I just wanted an answers to things I didn’t understand. My teacher wouldn’t acknowledge my hand waves, so I would just blurt out the questions. Naturally I don’t remember all my questions, but Noah got me kicked out. How long did it take Noah to build the Ark?? Didn’t all boats float?? And a common question. How did he collect all the different animals?? Then I noticed that all the other kids also wanted the answers. I was then told not to come back to class until I quit asking questions.

Then I just quit going and played in the park til the time was it was over. I thought I was the only one who couldn’t except the unknown. My mother was not fundamentalist, she went to church a few times a year. But I didn’t tell her and thankfully we move soon after. When I was about twelve, I met some people who I considered very intelligent and they believed in the bible, so I thought I was the dumb one. So I decided to read the whole bible all the way through, and found it even worse that I thought it was.

After that, I decided not to mention my Atheism (just found out the definition of what I was) because I wanted to fit in with my classmates.

I will begin by summarizing my life story briefly, then will get right on to sharing the official coming out Facebook post from 10/13/12.

I am a 31 yr old female, raised in a conservative evangelical charismatic home and was home school my whole life. At age 15 I became a zealot myself and got involved in missions with various cults (Teen Mania Ministries and YWAM). In March of 2011 I started my slow ascent out of Christianity, first as a mystic unbound by doctrine. By May of 2013 it hit me like a ton of bricks that I was sure that there was no god.

Almost all of my family and friends are Christians, though I am lucky my husband is a very liberal non-literal Christian who is 100% supportive of my path. I also have a few other family members and friends who have followed a similar path, so I am pretty fortunate. Still, I had too much on my plate (foster-adopting 3 young children, going to school full time and working part time) to deal with the emotional and psychological fall out of coming out. When I finally did 2 days ago, I felt nothing but liberation and knew then that I could face any reaction. Luckily, I’ve got nothing but support. Those who are shocked and hurt are gracious enough to lash out at or grovel with me. Hope this encourages and gives someone hope:

Whew, as you all probably know it’s been a busy several months for me as I started full time online school May 16. Yes, and I still have 3 young children (and a husband!) as well! For those who don’t know I am working on my prerequisites in hopes to be accepted into a physical therapy assistant program in January. Also, our adoption will be finalized the beginning of November! So, a lot of exciting stuff on the horizon.

On that note I know it seems I’ve dropped off the face of the earth, primarily due to my busy schedule. But also I can only guess many are wondering what happened to me and why I am always ranting on Facebook about homophobia/gay rights, racism, spiritual abuse and healthcare (to name the four topics that incite the most passion in me). Other might have seen some *shocking* things I have to say about religion and yes, Christianity.

So after several months of hiding out in my cave I am going to come right out and say it: I am no longer a Christian. If you must insist on a label I guess I’m agnostic. Take a breath, stop hyperventilating, crying, praying, feeling shocked or sorry for me and please hear me out if you love or care about me.

Why? I didn’t just wake up one day and decide it would be fun to “rebel against God”. This came about by much research, reflection, introspection and experience. It wasn’t because I was “hurt by church” or had some catastrophic event happen to me. It was a culmination of learning history: that most war, misogyny, homophobia, etc has been caused by religion. Christianity included.

Two key things did accelerate my questioning though: the first being studying actual church history. How many Christians reading this know who Iraneaus is? What the Nag Hammadi is? That Jesus never wrote down anything he said? How the canon was formed? That Martin Luther left out several books of the canon of his own accord, and nearly left out others that you now consider “inerrant truth”? “Truth” has always been determined by the sword and who had the power. We have always killed “heretics”. The second is deeply personal so I debated whether even to post in on the internet so I will just briefly touch on it. My children. I do deeply appreciate all the support we have had, and the sentiment behind, “I am praying for them” and “God has a plan”. I’m sorry, but along with all the other suffering in the world, what kind of good God messes up a birth family and children’s lives just to bring them to another family? That that is somehow supposed to “glorify Him”. I can no longer believe that “God has a plan”.

Then there is science. Over the past few years as I studied things for myself I came to embrace science and evidence. Contrary to mainstream Christian belief most theological scholars are not literal 7-day-creationists, so it is possible to be a Christian AND ascribe to science/evolution. So combined with my experience and other research, I had evidence of the damage of religion and no evidence of god, so I eventually gave up on the idea of god.

I will also touch on the issue of spiritual abuse. As most know I was heavily involved with both Teen Mania and YWAM and now consider them both to be cults and to be in recovery from them. Besides my own bad experiences, there is a compendium of testimonies of overt abuse in these organizations. I also have had similar experience with Calvary Chapel and every charismatic church/circle I have been in. Evangelicalism on the whole is cultic as well since it is centered on one senior pastor having all the power. At least mainline denominations have a structure that does not allow one person to have all the power. As part of my recovery I will stand up against oppressors on behalf of the oppressed, as evidenced by my rants about Mark Driscoll and others. I have personally witnessed and been part of the marginalizing of the LGBT community at the hands of Christianity and “love the sinner hate the sin” indoctrination. I do suffer PTSD like “trigger” symptoms at the discussion of certain things, certain words, etc. Again, nothing catastrophic happened to me, but it’s the subtle nature of spiritual abuse…how it makes you question your every single move, thought, and breath that makes it such a vicious animal.

So the facts and evidence aside, many are dying to know “but what about the experience you had with Jesus and the Holy Spirit?!”. Many are dumbfounded because of my “passion for Christ”. I wasn’t a pew warmer. I was a missionary, prepared to “give my life for the gospel”. I agonized every life decision in prayer. It is precisely my passion for truth and love for people that has driven me to where I am, not some desire to rebel. I sought the truth, and it made me free. My experiences were just that, mystical inexplicable psychological experiences. I was indoctrinated at Teen Mania to shout at ATF, “I KNOW JESUS IS REAL BECAUSE HE CHANGED MY LIFE!”. Another moment of awakening came 2 years ago when I watched the film Malcolm X. I could not deny that Malcolm experienced Allah in Mecca and that changed his life. I also cannot deny that many people I know are happier, healthier, more psychologically balanced and have better relationships as a result of leaving behind religion. On the same note, I am not denying anyone else’s experience with “Jesus”. If you feel that has “changed your life” I am not trying to deconvert you. I do acknowledge that many have had a conversion experience and are living a more stable life because of their “faith”. I am just sharing my journey in advance of the barrage of questions I will receive.

Others might know of my recent journey into mysticism and are curious why I can’t retain a mystical understanding of God and Christ apart from organized religion. In short, I still am ok with mysticism versus fundamentalism, and it is not a totally closed door for me. Which is why I identify as agnostic instead of atheist: no one can prove there is a God, but no one can prove there is not one. As long as mysticism doesn’t control others I am ok with it. For me I just no longer felt the need for mythology and found it more damaging than helpful at this point in my life. Perhaps I will one day return to it without any ties to literalism.

Do you want to know that I am happier, healthier and more confident now that I’ve left religion behind? That I no longer feel like a victim? That my true personality is unfolding? I am finding I am outgoing, assertive and opinionated now that I’m no longer under the restraint of being a “gentle and quiet spirit” “in submission”? That I am not spinning out into debauchery, that I live a sound moral life apart from god (yet don’t judge how anyone else lives their life)? That my relationship with my husband grows better and better all the time? Now that we are fully embracing being equals (that am I am incredibly lucky to have a husband that has been a feminist all along, it was I that had to give up patriarchal ideas) and supporting each others goals and dreams? That I love my kids and would give my life for them? That if they ever came out as gay I would happily and fully support them? That I will show my daughter by example that she can be anything she wants to be regardless of her sex or race, that “god’s plan for her life” is not limited to staying at home (not to knock any woman’s choice to do so, as long as it is just that and not under duress that is is “god’s design”)? That I sleep better at night, knowing there is no hell that anyone is being damned to after already suffering on this earth, not second guessing myself about anything, not wondering if I am in some kind of sin? That I am becoming more successful and intelligent and doing excellent in school? That with Humanism I am even more passionate about human beings and social justice (hence my rants about racism, homophobia, etc) than I was as a Christian because I know this is life is the only chance we have to create heaven and destroy hell? I am not just “living for myself”? That I have so much more respect for everyone now that know no one is born a sinner and I am not pitying poor lost souls (even when I thought that “Jesus loved everyone enough to die for them”)?

The only stress and depression I feel is knowing that many of you will be “interceding” for my soul, heartbroken and will try to friendship evangelism me back into the kingdom. You already know I “know all the answers” as I found when I tried to reconvert others in the past. As much as I love you, I cannot pretend to believe myths anymore or be someone I am not to keep the peace and to spare you the pain. I am sorry for any pain you feel and it was not my intention to hurt you, and I’m not trying to be right for the sake of being right and proving you wrong. I am not going to go around personally trying to deconvert each of you, asking you “why you came to the conclusions you did”, so I will appreciate the inverse from you. I understand most will pray for me and that’s fine, I can’t control you feeling sorry for me or sorry we’ve lost our “spiritual fellowship.” I you believe in god you will have to trust that he really is in control. But hopefully we can find a new normalcy for our relationships that includes mutual respect. I will not tolerate “you are being led astray by the enemy” or “you are bitter and need to forgive” or “Christians make mistakes, not Christ, don’t judge Jesus based on what Christians do” or “you are confused and going through a phase”. As much as I love you I will draw boundaries for myself.

I also don’t have the time or energy to respond to every single person who wants to have a personal discussion about this. It is what it is. I would have been happy to just stay in my cave and not deal with this, but I love and respect you all enough to tell you the truth about where I am in life. It has been a scary, gut-wrenching, tear filled yet fascinating and freeing journey and it continues to unfold. Hopefully agnostics and atheists are humanized in your mind now, I know Christians are still humanized in my mind apart from “Christianity”. Know that when I rant on Facebook or other forums about religion it is not to stand against individual Christians. A lot of it is processing my own experience, or standing against abusive leadership. We have all come to the conclusions we have for a reason, and are just trying to live this life the best we can. Feel free to pass this along to whoever isn’t on Facebook or isn’t on much as again, I don’t have the time or emotional energy to hash it out with everyone personally. Especially the closer we are the more difficult the whole thing is, so please don’t feel hurt that I didn’t call or visit you in person to tell you about my spiritual life.

Blessings on your journey.

“Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.” -Christopher Hitchens

I wish in my youth I heard the enlightening words of the great Christopher Hitchens.
I came from a Catholic family. My mothers side of the family is very religious, my father’s family as well was Catholic. However, my father isn’t very religious anymore. I went to a Catholic school for 8 years. In those eight years I was told what to believe, what was “good”, what was “evil”, and what happened after death.

For years I blindly accepted everything I was told to believe in by my elders.

Until one day, I was a freshmen in high school it was the middle of October when my father took me to see a movie. This movie was a documentary film about religion. The film was created by the critical stand-up comic Bill Maher. At the time I did not know who he was, but I’m glad I saw the film. The movie was witty, funny, and eye-opening for me. Maher showed logical objections towards religion, he talked about it has a dark side, how it’s cause more evil then good, how it is man made and used by man to control others. When the film ended people gave it a standing ovation. I entered that theater a blind religious sheep. I left it with eyes-opened to a new world I never knew about.

I wanted to learn more about Atheist, Skeptics, and Freethinkers.

Over the next few months I spent most of my time researching Atheist writers, philosophers, actors, and scientist. I discovered new unique people. I learned about Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Jean Paul Sartre, and George Orwell. I learned that so many great people were atheist, I learned that many of the founding fathers weren’t christian they were Deist. I learned more about religious war. How a majority of wars have been caused by religion. (This was shocking to me because I never learned about this at my Catholic School.)

After reading all the essays on evolution, religion, and the universe were complete I came to a conclusion that there is no god. This scared me at first, I didn’t tell anyone for awhile. It got a llite frustrating because I just wanted to tell someone anyone about this new revelation I had experienced in my life. However, at the time I was still somewhat ashamed of myself and was afraid I’d loose my friends and family members if I came out.

A month or so later at school my friend asked me “What’s your religion? Do you believe in God?” I took a deep breath and responded ”I have no religion, I do not believe in god or any deities I am an atheist.” The words just erupted from my mouth and as they did I felt a sense of happiness as if all the stress in the world had vanished into thin air. I couldn’t hold it in any longer I had to come out and I didn’t care what anyone thought. My friend had an expression on his face I’ll never forget for as long as I live. It was the type of face you see in horror films, when the character is frozen in shock and fear. He somewhat freaked out and started asking me questions like why don’t I believe, did something happen, do you need help? I answered all his questions holding nothing back telling the whole story of how I lost faith. Yet he still seemed in shock. Which confused me at the time, it was as if I was the first Atheist he’s ever met. It wasn’t long till all my friends new I was a non-believer. (I should mention though I went to a public school not a private one.) Not all my friends were very religious though. Most of them told me they really didn’t care as long as I’m happy. Them saying that made me feel so glad I would not loose our friendship. However, I can’t say the same for others. A few friends of mine took extreme offense to this. As if just because of my Atheism I was now their enemy. I am happy to say over the years we’ve reconnected with each other despite our beliefs.

I was very afraid to tell my parents. (My mother most of all). My father like me also became less religious but it was still difficult to tell them.
Luckily, they accepted my choice and did not overreact about it.

I’ve been an Atheist for 6 years now. I’m living a fairly happy life in Ohio. I’m studying Writing and Film in college now. I hope one day to write a book or make a movie in the future.

I’m proud to call my self an Atheist. No matter what the world thinks of me or my fellow Freethinkers.

Thank you for reading.

Sinisterly,

Evan Strozniak

Mormon Father. Jewish Mother.

27 cousins on his side. 1 on hers.

I hated church as a child, mainly because it was long and boring and I didn’t believe anything anybody said. It all sounded nice, but I could never convince myself that anyone speaking at the pulpit actually believed what they were saying. It sounded more like regurgitation of dogmatic maxims, like: “knowing” Mormonism is “the one true church”.

During Sunday School, they tried to convince me that Joseph Smith was told by god in a vision to dig up and translate magical plates of gold, written in a dead language, which predict Christ’s eventual return to Missouri. (Yes, that Missouri). Even as a boy, I knew this silliness was not for me. But I was afraid to tell anyone my true feelings out of fear being judged.

So I played along as best I could, repressing my anger and shame. I came to despise the church’s supernatural teachings, much to the chagrin of my Sunday School teachers, who feebly attempted to answer my smug questions, like: ‘if there is no hell (Mormons don’t believe in it), why shouldn’t I just kill myself to get to heaven sooner?’. I was a handful. Eventually, my distain for the church’s dogma reached critical mass after I was forced to participate in church-sanctioned “Baptisms for the Dead”. Google it.

At 15, my parents finally allowed me to drop out of Seminary (daily 6am bible-study), and I have not attended a Mormon service since.

I spent the next 15 years investigating other religions. Surprisingly, my journey was similar to Joseph Smith’s. Both he and I shared dissatisfied with the church we were born into, so we explored others in early adulthood. Over the years I have studied and/or practiced Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, Falun Gong, Hinduism, Catholicism, and even Scientology (which is the most bogus of them all).

At 25, I even traveled to Israel for two weeks to explore my Jewish heritage.

At 30, I decided to stop searching for god. I had searched enough. Then something amazing happened. I realized I had been an Atheist my entire life.

I do not believe in Atheism, the way religious people believe in god. Rather, I choose to accept the reality that no empirical evidence exists to prove there is a god (or Zeus, or Allah, or Vishnu) instead of assuming the opposite – that god exists because he cannot be disproven. That decision automatically makes me an Atheist.

If there is anything I have learned as a therapist, it is that everyone’s brain is wired differently. It is not good or bad, just different. Some people are wired to WANT to be told what the rules are. It is too hard, or too scary, or just too much work to figure out the truth for themselves, so they adopt the beliefs of others and pass them off as their own. For some people, believing in a made-up answer is better than admitting that no answer exists.

I am not one of those people.

I choose to take responsibility for my actions, good and bad, rather than attribute my success to god and my failure to sin.

Life as an Atheist has made me happier than ever before. I finally feel allowed to be myself, all of the time. Instead of attributing the good I experience to god’s benevolence, I praise myself for a job well done. Rather than pray to God for help, I use my brain to figure out the best solution to my problems.

And, if I find myself at the pearly gates after I am dead and gone, I will happily admit my transgressions and repent of my sins. But until some proof exists that god — or Brahma, or Osiris, or Elohim, or Athena — is real, I choose to accept the science of evolution over cult superstition.

I wasn’t born a Mormon, or a Jew; I was born an Atheist. I have never believed in a god, no matter how many times I tried to convince myself otherwise.

Sorry, Dad. I was just born this way.

Penn Jillette tells my story far better than I ever could, so I won’t bother.

(He later expanded this into a chapter of his recent book “God, No“.)

Henry Morris and the Institute for Creation Research oddly enough managed to play a pivotal role in turning me away from fundamentalism, and that eventually turned me away from faith based belief.

I won’t go into a complete bio. Not that it wouldn’t be a real page turner and highly entertaining, but I don’t have the time, and one day, I’ll write a book. So here are a couple of highlights:

Married at 19, my wife and I were Believers – we attended conservative, bible believing churches, and the religious community provided us with community and support that we needed at that time. We were committed to this world view. But there were intellectual problems. Creationism v. Science being the most obvious of these. I tried to reconcile these matters, but when I read the creationist literature, I was appalled. It was absolutely rubbish, and I couldn’t get past that. This was not enough to move me from my belief, but it did mean that I had to adopt a slightly more liberal approach to the bible generally.

I also encountered severe hypocrisy within the church(es). This didn’t prove/disprove anything in and of itself, but it did serve to make me more critical of the sources of my information. I also saw innocent people, and some people I personally cared for very much, hurt very badly by these monsters.

And then there was the day that I was in desperate need of help – I was in a terrible financial bind that threatened everything I valued… I prayed. I pleaded. I needed supernatural intervention. Intellectually, I knew all the reasons why god might not answer, but I was already starting to doubt, and in my own mind, this was a test. God failed.

But the greatest influence came from my studies. I obtained a philosophy degree. I learned how to think. I went on and obtained a law degree. I learned to think. Thank you, Descartes for teaching me rationality. Thank you Spinoza for showing me that rationality leads to materialism. And materialism and rationality combine to create Science.

Against all of this, I still hadn’t lost my faith, but I was uncertain. And, I was also informed. I knew the arguments. It was time to test them. I picked up Sam Harris’ End of Faith. I reasoned that either he was right or wrong. I further reasoned that I had sufficient knowledge and training to find the error if it was there. And if it wasn’t there, I owed it to myself to have my own beliefs tested, and if necessary rejected.

I was wrong. Sam Harris was right.

Then I discovered podcasting and the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. And the JREF. And TAM. And I found my people.

While I generally consider myself a private person, I’ve been actively blogging, sharing articles online, and participating in groups with shared interests for a number of years now. Through these outlets I’ve connected with many people and new friends, and also became involved with different organizations. It was through one of these networks that I met up with another Latino professional visiting Atlanta, Mr. David Tamayo, the acting president of the Hispanic American Freethinkers. I support the interests of this group, so when he asked me to participate in an interview for a podcast I readily agreed. A few months later the podcast was published. I was overwhelmed by the realization that I had shared my beliefs so publicly.

After the initial shock wore off I had a few conversations with other atheist friends and did a little bit of soul searching through reading and listening to my favorite philosophers. Although my “coming out” had not been intentional, it has been one of the most liberating experiences I have ever felt. I’ve decided to publish the details of the story in the hopes that it will inspire others of the same conviction to do the same.

I was 16 years old when I first discovered that I was an atheist. At the time, the most difficult problem in the world was surviving high school. My father was in the military and I spent most of my childhood hopping around military bases. In the 10th grade I moved to Puerto Rico and started high school at a private school.

I should mention that Puerto Rico itself is a highly religious country. As far as I know everyone in my extended family are Christian of varying denominations: Catholic, Jehovah Witness, Evangelical/Pentecostal, etc. I’ve also never seen a single Puerto Rican publicly speak in favor of Atheism on the island in any forum.

Even so, when I started school in Puerto Rico a number of different things forced me to seriously question some of what was behind my own Christianity. Prior to moving to Puerto Rico my life was great. On the military bases, communities were incredibly diverse and the children all very warm and welcoming. We all knew what it was like to be the new kid. Personally, I was on cloud nine early in adolescence. I had good grades, played sports, and had a few good, close friendships. When I moved to Puerto Rico, all of those things changed. The move itself didn’t phase me, as I was used to moving. What became very difficult was how I was initially treated by other students in high school. No longer was I the cute, intelligent Puerto Rican kid in the class. I was one of many cute, intelligent Puerto Rican kids, some of whom had been going to school with each other for 10 years or more. I was teased for everything. My accent, my intelligence, and for being “gay”. It is unfortunate that this was at the time, and persists as a means to demean and alienate boys of every orientation.

This made me question some pretty big things about god. How was it that I could be an altar boy for so many years, preach in favor of the church as a teenager, and generally have supported faith for so long, to be faced with this kind of torment? Wasn’t faith precisely the thing that is supposed to make life easier? What was I doing wrong?

I thought back on the last time I felt I needed god’s help. It was 7 years earlier when I was in the third grade. There was one night back then where I truly felt I needed god’s help. I remember that I kneeled down at the end of my bed and prayed as hard as I had ever prayed before in my life. The next day the situation unfolded as I expected and everything happened just as I envisioned it would in my prayers. God came through for me, and I decided I wanted to be a priest.

On the basis of this past experience I told myself that my problem was that I had not been praying hard enough. I hadn’t prayed so hard since that night. At this point I decided that I was not being faithful enough and I changed churches until I ended up in an evangelical church. I believed that in a stricter church I would find support for the kind of life that had once been mine: happy, supported, and with many friends. I nose dived into evangelism, and still nothing at school changed. I continued to be ostracized and teased, and life refused to make sense.

One night at service I was listening to the preacher and I was trying to understand what the message was. I slowly started understanding his words and realized a very paralyzing thought. I was going to hell. It was inevitable. Every sentence he uttered convinced me more and more that I would never be absolved of sin and that I was headed to hell with all deliberate speed.

I never really payed attention to the people around me at services, but for some reason, after I came to the realization that I would be burning in hell for eternity, I looked to see what other people were doing. I thought to myself “this man is telling us we are going to burn, how is everyone else reacting to this news?” Some were dancing, some were wailing, and some were speaking in tongues. I was aware of the dissonance in these messages. How could people hear the message that we were all destined to eternity in hell and then decide to celebrate the idea in this enraptured state? I broke down.

My body started trembling and I started to cry like I had never cried in my life. I couldn’t tell the difference between sweat, tears, or snot and my brain refused to think of anything other than the fact that I was destined to spend eternity in torment. I fell to my knees and sobbed. And then the most ridiculous, unbelievable thing happened where everyone in the room rushed over to celebrate with me. In my mind I was damned, to them I had been saved. People took me by the arms, and having no energy to resist, they moved me to the front of the church where the pastor was waiting with some kind of bottle.

I was exhausted when I finally made it home, I passed out in to sleep. The next morning I woke up and I felt fine. FINE. As I was eating breakfast, it occurred to me that I had just received the worst news of my life a few hours earlier yet I was enjoying my toast as if nothing had happened. I realized something was wrong. But who could explain it? Everyone I knew thought I had just had the greatest moment of my life and yet I felt more confused than ever. There was nowhere to turn and no one to ask. Then I remembered some books I had been ignoring for the last six years. I decided I would read some of them.

My father values education over just about everything in life and my mother generally feels the same, she’s a teacher. When I was in the sixth grade my father spent A LOT of money on a set of Britannica Encyclopedias. Part of that deal included Britannica’s Great Books series, a compilation of classic literature that included Aristotle, Voltaire, Spinoza and many others.

My first experience with these books was in the form of a “punishment”. I had invited my friend Brad to come play video games with me but my father thought that our evening would be better spent with Don Quijote and Chaucer. My poor friend and I had to spend an hour reading at the table before we could play our video games. I could hardly contain my embarrassment and frustration. I remember my mother smiling in a corner waiting for the appropriate time to intercede and let boys be boys. Eventually we were allowed to our Street Fighter II and that was the end of those awful books.

Five years later I needed answers and the wisdom of my parents shone through my confusion. Education and knowledge are the keys to finding answers to questions. I started with Aristotle.

It took a couple weeks, in fact it took me about three days to get through the first page of Aristotle’s categories. I had never read anything in that sort of language before and the things he was writing about were so above my head that I could not wrap myself around them without serious parsing of sentences and multiple trips to dictionaries. A few weeks later we got an internet connection. Between the great books and the internet I became a philosophical monster. Through the process I found intellectual courage and insight. When I made it to Spinoza the world started making sense again. I finally found an answer I was looking for but it was completely unexpected and in a most raw form: no one who speaks with certainty about the existence of god has the slightest idea of what they are talking about.

I went back to my high school with a vengeance. I challenged my classmates and my teachers on the topic as much as I possibly could at every opportunity. Although there were many of these encounters I will recount the two most memorable ones here. Both occurred during my senior Spanish literature class. The Spanish teacher and I had developed a very good intellectual relationship, we challenged each other on current events in Puerto Rico and often had very good philosophical conversations.

One day in her spanish class we were asked to share our opinions on a rewritten translation of a quote by John Stuart Mill, “it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied”. We were to choose a side and some of us would be called to share our opinions. My initial reaction to this quote was that the answer was obvious, of course one would choose to be the Socrates, what could be better than the truth? It’s a trick question, the Socrates is more satisfied than the pig. And so I wrote my paper. The teacher then asked the class to share our papers and a girl (who, of course was also my greatest crush throughout high school) raises her hand straight into the air to be first. I remember thinking that she was incapable of choosing the wrong answer, after all, she always had the best grades and in my opinion was always the most responsible student. I was wrong. In fact six more girls had volunteered their answers and each one of them went with being the satisfied pig. I was shocked. Exasperated, I raised my hand and shared my paper and at the same time came out as an atheist to my senior class.

After that day, I returned to school with atheistic quotes plastered all over the front cover of my school binder. On the back, a picture of a pig with the red circle (such as are in no-smoking signs) and a strike through it. My atheism quickly became a hot button issue. The Spanish teacher thought it would be a good idea for me to explain my beliefs to the class in a presentation. I agreed to make my presentation even though I thought it would be fruitless. I gave the best explanation of the big bang and evolution that I could at the time but I could see my classmates faces the entire time, only a few had any interest.

I quickly became irate and used my intellectual upper hand and my immediate control of the classroom to cut down some of my classmates at the knees when they asked questions that I thought were a mockery of my words. A few of my classmates did ask me serious questions and I did my best to give them my honest answers, I remember all five of them and still sincerely appreciate their honest interest in my ideas. The end of my presentation in front of the class was after one of the girls stood up from her desk and screamed at me in her fullest voice: “You are going to burn in hell!” I didn’t have the energy to continue after that and I think the teacher realized it was time to stop. I had done my best but the teacher told me I had squandered the opportunity to speak to the class. The relationship between us immediately disintegrated and I stopped participating in her class.

In high school I continued to be somewhat ostracized, but at least now I felt that it was for what I was, and not for what I was not. And that made bearing the brunt of the teasing significantly easier. These events led to what would be the most difficult part of my atheist conversion, my family. I never stopped reading those books or the articles I could find online. One day I found an especially interesting article, a satire that described Lucifer as the one true god. I found it absolutely hilarious, however my father didn’t find it quite as funny when he saw it on the computer screen (I had forgotten to close the window and walked away to make my lunch in the kitchen).

A couple hours later he called me to the living room and sat down with me. He asked if I had anything to tell him and I responded no, somewhat bewildered. He said, “I saw what was on your computer screen, now do you have anything to tell me? ” At first I was scared to answer, but at that point what more could I say but the truth? I had already been caught, I was already getting burned at school, how much worse could it be? And my father had always been willing to listen to me. I told him that I thought the idea of god was an old idea, that it didn’t make sense, and that it couldn’t possibly be true. At the time I thought he was totally with me because he was very quiet, and he nodded as I spoke. It turns out this was the calm before the storm.

Later that same week, my parents were both in my room one evening and the subject came up. I won’t give details about any of what was said but I will say it was a knockdown battle, far worse than anything I had gone through in school. Not because of the quality of the words but because of who and what I was challenging. I never had any idea how deep the idea ran in my family, maybe it was my ignorance or maybe it was because after understanding the nature of the god problem I didn’t think anyone was truly capable of taking it seriously. I think most atheists that have converted from a belief in god would agree that the whole process is akin to making god and jesus christ equivalent to Santa Claus. Truly becoming an atheist is generally a kind of inoculation. In any case, having lost my ability to understand just what I had challenged, and just how far that challenge went, I was unprepared for the argument that night.

After that evening I was forced to go to church every Sunday. It was as if I had injected the household with more faith than had ever been present before. I reacted very strongly to this, I felt that it was unfair to be forced to partake in something I did not believe in. I decided that I would act in kind, as most rebellious teenagers do. After mass every Sunday I would get the ladder from the toolshed and climb up to the roof for exactly one hour. I thought that if I was going to be forced into an hour of mass that I deserved to take an hour away from my family.

After a few weeks my family eventually found my hour away strange. My father was the first to approach me and one Sunday he asked if he could come up to the roof with me. I wanted to say no, but I knew I did not have a choice. I said yes and up he came. The conversation was long but the general idea was him asking for an explanation. Again forced into honesty, I told him why I took an hour for myself every Sunday. I explained that being persecuted for having different beliefs was precisely what happened to Christ and that I thought forcing me to go to church was ironically reminiscent. Luckily my father is a reasonable man and after that he decided against forcing me to go to church.

The issue became a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in my household and generally speaking the topic no longer comes up. Despite this, I must say that my parents have still been incredibly supportive of all of my other endeavors and since that time I have never been punished or reprimanded by either of them for these beliefs. I would imagine that they still suffer because of this decision and I have had family members question whether I can truly love or respect them because of my lack of faith. Others have told me that it is impossible for me to be an atheist, I think they simply prefer to believe that I am lying or confused, or that I do it for attention. What I have learned thirteen years later is that I have kept my parent’s values but without the attached mythology. I eventually became a teacher and have never stopped educating myself, which is what I think my parents tried to teach me from the beginning.

It may be that family members will disagree with my sharing this story. Family always comes first, and these are the kinds of things I think they would prefer I leave in the closet. It doesn’t feel good to know they feel the way they do about my beliefs, much in the same way they may experience my feelings about their own beliefs. THE difference lies in having different beliefs than the majority of my community, which can be a isolating feeling. It suffices to say that it was not easy to make the decision to share the details of this story as publicly as I have.

If you are thinking about coming out as an atheist then there are a number of considerations to have. Coming out will undoubtedly bring many serious and harsh difficulties to your life, especially if you come from a traditionally religious home. You may lose family support, friends, and some people will even stop speaking to you. Complete strangers have said to my face that I deserve to die the worst possible death imaginable, showing absolutely no guilt or remorse for having said it. Many of those that don’t say it will think it, again with no remorse or guilt.

Ultimately coming out in this way is something I knew I had to do. I know now that I prefer to have the people around me be honest with their affections for me and they cannot do that if I live a lie. I am coming out in this way hoping that the people I love will expand their understanding and acceptance of what I believe, and to give others the courage to speak out for their atheism.